


end

by blawky



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Leta Lestrange deserved better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 22:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17109290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blawky/pseuds/blawky
Summary: "Sometimes I wonder if it’s my birthright. Perhaps evil is the true legacy of the Lestranges.”a piece detailing the effect that leta's passing had on the scamander brothers.





	1. Chapter 1: Theseus

_“I love you,” she whispers onto the air, her voice somber and distant, like a spring breeze through long-dead branches. The words are almost lost, almost gone before they can ever reach the ears of their target. But this is the past._

In the present, a man with red-rimmed eyes and hair that had once been quiffed to perfection stands at a mahogany podium, his voice creaking and sad as he speaks, lacking all the bravado he once seemed to possess in spades.

“Leta Lestrange,” he says, a single tear gliding down his cheek, a dewdrop upon a morning leaf, “died as she lived: with bravery.” There’s a pause, a beat, where his face loses any hint of composure, where it contorts in sadness and in rage. 

“She spat in the face of those who proclaimed superiority above others, and gave and gave until she had nothing left to give but her own life. Leta Lestrange, the woman who would have been Leta Scamander,” and it is here that Theseus can no longer speak, that he must step back from the podium and allow himself a breath in which he pours cement in the walls that have come crashing down around him. 

_First kisses. Theseus’s lips pressed softly against Leta’s, her eyes wide in shock. Leta’s mind races, questioning, wondering. How did this happen? Theseus was brave, a Gryffindor, and he was good. Better than she was. Better than she deserved._

When at last his composure is regained, Theseus places his hands on either side of the podium, knuckles whiter than snow. It was as if that podium was his last hope at sanity, and he held to it with an iron grip. 

“Many of you here may know her only by her time at Hogwarts, a time spent hiding in the shadows of a grief she did not deserve, of a surname that she was infinitely better than. Leta Lestrange was so much more than a Lestrange, so much more than her wicked relatives. I have never met, nor do I think I will ever meet, anyone in the world like her.” His voice is soft, broken, like shredded silk falling through one’s fingertips.

_Leta’s eyes wide when she received her wand: hazel and dragon heartstring. Her hands shaking as she used that same wand for the first time, and the next time, and the next._

“When I proposed to Leta, we had been together for five years already. My time with Leta was the best time of my life,” Theseus says, clearing his throat loosely, “and I will always love her. Till death do us part, and beyond.” It is in the way that he says it, the conviction behind his ironclad words, that betray his true loss. 

_Two lovers, alone atop a bridge overlooking the sea. Leta’s body shakes with fear and with agony as she bears her soul to Theseus, tears streaking down her cheeks._

Something ugly, rageful, takes over Theseus’s face as he falls silent, something full of hatred and malice and all the violent things that this cruel world has to offer. “Grindelwald will pay for what he’s done,” comes the Auror’s voice, and it is clear to everyone in the audience that something in this man in broken. Something has been rendered unfixable in him, and it will never leave him. A memory dances before Theseus’s eyes, a memory of Leta, consumed by blue fire, consumed by Grindelwald, consumed—

Theseus is sobbing behind the podium when Newt and Tina come to help him up, his face red and his cheeks patchy. 

_Leta, eyes alight with joy as Theseus opened a small, velveteen box, a crystalline ring inside. Leta, privately weeping tears of joy that she will finally abandon this hateful name, abandon the Lestranges, abandon the world they tried to birth her into._

Leta, buried wrongfully under the name of Lestrange, buried wrongfully despite all her sacrifices. This mausoleum is too cold, too cold, and she doesn’t belong her, she’s never belonged here. They don’t even have her body, don’t even have the ashes of whatever spell Grindelwald used to turn her to dust. Theseus weeps, his hands pressed against his eyes as Newt lifts him up, holding him in an embrace.

_“I was a bad person, Theseus,” Leta says, her eyes sad and broken._

_“We all do bad things sometimes.”_

_“Not you. Not Newt. Sometimes I wonder if it’s my birthright. Perhaps evil is the true legacy of the Lestranges.”_

_“It is_ not.” _Theseus rubbed his hands along Leta’s cheeks, his thumbs catching the tears before they could fall. “You are not evil. You are not defined by your family name. You are not defined by the evils of your family.” Theseus guided Leta’s face to look directly into his own._

_“You are a good person, Leta Lestrange, and I love you so much that it scares me.”_

Leta’s hand on his is the last thing he feels before his world turns back to the present, before tears streak down his vision again.


	2. Chapter 2: Newt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “She wasn’t a monster.” His voice sounds foreign, almost as angry as Theseus’s. “The Lestrange name wasn’t hers. She was a Scamander, married to Theseus or not.”

_“I did it,” Newt Scamander said, and Leta Lestrange’s eyes went wide behind him. The truth lay on her tongue, seductive, begging to get out. But she bit her tongue, let Newt take the fall, not because she wanted him to, but over and over all she saw in her head was her wand snapping in half, her father’s lip curling in rage. Apathy was better than hate._

“Leta Lestrange and I shared...a special bond,” Newt begins, his face patchy like his brother’s, but he appears more restrained: he was always the one more in touch with his emotions, even if he was more prone to tucking them away for quiet reflection later. Theseus was content to let everything come to the surface in violent strokes of red and blue, painting the world with his emotions. Newt had envied it, long ago, but today it is a small blessing that he does not have his brother’s temperament. 

“I loved her. At first, I thought I loved her the way Theseus and she loved each other, and I felt this way for a long, long time while at Hogwarts, and even after.” 

_Leta stumbled into the closet Newt had been using as a personal conservatory, and both witch and wizard are flabbergasted that the other is in the space._

_“Who are you?” Leta asked, voice cold but somehow soft. Newt was going to ask what she was doing in the supply closet, but he bit the question and responded to hers._

_“Newt Scamander.” Realization dawned on Leta’s face as he said it, her face growing some sort of light to it._

_“Right. The Hufflepuff. We met in Charms class.” Newt blinked. He didn’t think Leta would remember it, remember how Newt had accidentally bumped into her, how he’d been so captivated by the swirling amber of her eyes he’d barely even managed to whisper a ‘sorry’ before scurrying off._

“It was only after I left Hogwarts that I realized that my love for Leta was much more similar to the way I love my family. Leta Lestrange was my first friend, but more than that, she was family. She was a sister, a friend, a companion in dark times.” 

_Leta’s knuckles white as she gripped a suitcase. She didn’t talk about her house—she’d never called it a home, Newt realized, and she’d never called her father family—but when she did, there was something shattered in her gaze._

_“Do you want to spend the break with my family?” Newt didn’t expect her to say yes, but he figured he’d offer it just the same. Leta’s eyes widened when she realized he’d been speaking to her._

_“I…” Leta paused, and her knuckles grew whiter still. “I would like that, Newt,” she began, and her eyes dropped down to the floor, “but I don’t think that Co-my father would allow it.”_

“Leta carried with her a perennial nimbus of sadness. There were days in which it seemed as though it were her constant companion, as though some unseen grief tugged at her, pulled at her. The first day I ever found out about this grief—not the nature of it, mind— was during our third year at Hogwarts. Leta said something about a Thestral, and it was then that I realized Leta Lestrange had been marked, not just by her family name, but by an unspeakable grief that clung to everything about her.” 

_“You can’t see them, can you?” Leta’s head tilted to the side, those sad eyes boring into his face. Newt always joked that she could have just as easily been a Ravenclaw with the way she stared owlishly at the subject of her inquiries._

_“No,” Newt said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry that you can.”_

_“Me too.” They fell silent after that, just staring out at the expanse where she’d seen the Thestral. They were both comfortable in the silence: it had become normal, to them. A constant. Leta didn’t talk without being incited to do so, and Newt was far too self-conscious to ever talk about anything besides magical beasts, and he ran out of facts sometimes._

“Many wizards would have taken that grief and let it boil, let it turn into something nasty, rotten, let it grow into resentment for our whole cruel, cruel world that took a little girl and made her think herself a monster.” Newt wasn’t sure if the same fate wouldn’t have befallen him or Theseus in Leta’s shoes: she’d always said they were better people than she was, but he couldn’t imagine the kind of pain she’d had to endure for all those years. 

“Not Leta, though,” and for a moment, Newt thinks of Queenie, thinks of how he almost thought Leta had taken the same route as Queenie, and he chastises himself for thinking so lowly of his best friend.

“Leta took her pain, took her sorrow, her grief, and she didn’t let it define her. Leta became a force for good, a person so full of love for her friends that she died to save them.” The tears fall without pause now, and Newt stops, taking a breath to collect himself. 

“But Leta died thinking she was a monster, that somehow this was all an atonement for a sin that she dreamed up, an innocent act that turned into something sour and bitter, something she decided was her fault.” 

_“It wasn’t your fault.” Newt meant it, poured everything he had into the words._

_“You’re too good, Newt,” she said, and the look she cast his way broke his heart more than any unreciprocated love ever had. “You’ve never met a monster you couldn’t love.”_

“She wasn’t a monster.” His voice sounds foreign, almost as angry as Theseus’s. “The Lestrange name wasn’t hers. She was a Scamander, married to Theseus or not.” 

_“I love you,” Leta whispered, and in that moment, Newt knew it wasn’t meant for either Theseus or him. It was for both of them: for the brother she’d never had, and the love she’d craved so deeply._

“Rest well, Leta Scamander,” Newt finally says. “Your sacrifice will not be in vain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you again for reading this fic! i hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> day 36 of leta lestrange deserving better

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading this fic! sorry that theseus's bit is shorter than newt's; it was a lot harder to write emotionally
> 
> i have a lot of FEELINGS about the treatment of leta lestrange so feel free to scream with me 
> 
> more leta-centric fics to come soon!


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